THE SATYR
It was nearly sunset in the tiny (though not as tiny as some) village of Kusta when a barefoot, ivory-skinned, steely-eyed girl walked through the very outskirts and farms on her way to the center. The village that the strange girl had come from was so tiny, that market had only been held one day a week. Kusta was large enough so that market was every five days, and a small trading post was open at all times. The population of Kusta was just over five hundred. Six hundred if you counted the far-away farms and a small bachelors community of laborers some six miles from the center of the village.
Helen drew eyes as she walked. Her clothes were ragged and dirty, though her face and hair were well-groomed. Her skin was pale and creamy, and her eyes were bright poison-green. Her features were feline, and her movements were brisk and businesslike. More like a catamount's lope then the stride of a woman on her way to market.
She carried some meat wrapped in the raw hides of the animals the meat had come from. She carried a bundle of fabric rolled up tight. She had a small pouch at her waist. Otherwise, the strange girl had no possessions. She looked neither right nor left as she blazed down the dry road with her bare feet raising small puffs of dust. She ignored the weight of the villager's stares.
The villagers who lived in Kusta knew that the girl had come from the narrow rarely-used track that led to an unnamed backwards little commune on the edge of the great forest itself. She was strange in every way, and something about the determined set of those slender shoulders and the steel in those bright tilted eyes discouraged the villagers from trying to slow her down.
---
Helen stopped in front of the little trading post. All of the buildings on the main street of Kusta were dusty and small, with some business, but not much. A pub, the trading post, and large stable that housed oxen, mules, and horses. Kusta was too small to need any large amount law enforcement, so there was a small stone building that was the head peacekeeper's office, courtroom, and gaol all in one. The rest of main street just held the large homes of the town's wealthiest.
Helen entered the open doorway of the little trading post. The room was small, and she could survey the store in a single glance. Bins of seed and flour across one wall. Open barrels with tongs so you could take out whatever was within. One had pickles, one had salt pork, another salted fish, and the last had coarse brown sugar. A few bolts of cloth hung on a shelf, and another wall was devoted to farming tools and shears and plow blades and the like. The last wall was divided into three sections. One was horse tack, the other was a small grocery, with a small supply of fresh eggs and butter and dried meat and vegetables, and the last was taken up with the shopkeeper.
Helen sized up the shopkeeper in a glance. He was an older man, the hair that was left on his head was iron grey, and he covered his bald pate with a soft cloth cap. He had a heavy grey mustache, and his face had both smile lines and heavy crow's feet, though he couldn't be older then fifty-five. He wore a simple white shirt and wool breeches, and over that a leather apron. He had been writing some figures down on heavy coarse brown pulp-paper with a carved ink pen that had the look of something made in the capitol.
He looked like a kind man, Helen thought. And he looked like a lonely man. He smiled at her, and waved.
"Hello young miss, you're from out of Kusta, aren't you?"
Helen had a bit of flair for acting, she would discover. Her clever brain was already ticking away on how to turn her bare assets into something a little more substantial.
Helen looked around the store and outside the dusty window. She flinched a little when he spoke to her, as if startled, and gave him a wide-eyed rabbity look. She took a moment to answer him, as if so distracted that she didn't know what to say.
"Ah... Y-Yes. I'm from u-up the road."
Helen had never stuttered in her life. Or spoken in such a strained, frightened voice. Already the shopkeeper was looking at her with his innocent, concerned eyes. Helen felt a pang of guilt, but it was small, and she needed his help.
"Young miss? Are you alright? Come here miss, sit down and I'll get you a dipper of water."
He got up out of his rocking chair and ushered her to sit in it, barely touching her. Helen saw his eyes briefly dart to the hint of cleavage at the top of her chemise. He didn't have a wife, she knew that out of a pure intuition, or perhaps some low-grade sixth-sense from her heritage. Either way, now she knew that he was interested in her, and that he was kind, and that he had no obligation to some wife. Now Helen only wished that she had loosened her vest and pulled down the chemise.
He scooped up a dipper of cool water from the bucket near the door and came back to her. She drank very deeply (she really had been thirsty) and then wiped her mouth with a slightly shaking hand.
"I'm so sorry Sir, I j-just... I just..."
Tears welled in her eyes. Helen just had to think about her mother, not even a full day dead, and act distraught. The shopkeeper's eyes crinkled up with concern. Helen started to sob into her hands.
The shopkeeper hobbled (he had a slight limp) to the door to close it and he rushed back to her, pulling a crumpled (but clean) handkerchief from the breast pocket of his homespun shirt.
"There there miss... Please miss, what happened to fret you? Are you hurt?"
He was so kind. Helen hoped that things would go well. "I... I'm so sorry Mister, I shouldn't b-bring you into this. I'm j-just so scared!"
Helen's mind raced, thinking of the perfect story, while she broke into another volley of sobs and the shopkeeper worried around her, patting her shoulder with his hand, afraid to touch her too intimately.
"Miss, if you don't have anyone waiting for you, please come back with me. I don't mean you any harm, but perhaps I can make you a cup of tea, and you can tell me what is fretting you so?" He sounded curious, and hesitant. Despite that glance at her breasts, this was really a kind man. Perhaps even too kind.
Helen let her voice tremble, and she looked up into those gentle blue eyes with a look of pure gratitude and devotion. "W-Would you? Oh, thank you Sir! Thank you so much!"
---
Helen stopped sobbing, but she did her best to look and feel fragile. The shopkeeper was named Carter, and she didn't tell him her real name. Instead, she invented a person to be. She did her very best, and soon she wasn't acting. She felt the fear and loneliness and betrayal of a girl named Elle.
Carter sat on the other side of a small wooden table, sipping tea from a chipped ceramic mug and listening to 'Elle' as she told him what had happened.
"Penelope? She always hated me. She hated me more when Andru, this man in the village, started courting me."
'Elle' choked a weak little sob into the well-dampened handkerchief and continued.
"One day, when I was bathing in the stream, she saw me." She saw Carter blush a little, and felt more confident. "I have, a birthmark on my thigh, right here?" She drew her finger along the line of her thigh through the skirt, making the fabric dip between her legs to clearly show the shape of them.
